the flood of tiny armies

[Warlord-616x]

hey guys, just got aserai down to 2 towns, but they still have dozens of clans and what are these clans doing? running around individually in swarms. there are so many that at times you cant see the ground on the map and nobody is making any armies they just swarm all around you constantly. there are so many of them that im almost certain it leads to crashing when too many of them get around you, any ideas how to get around this?

 

[Tal-roth]

I know if you speed things up and wait by a town they look like a swarm of ants around a nest!!!

 

[Warlord-616x]

lol its true

 

[The Great Grub]

hell even when an ai faction still have like 6-10 cities this still happens its insane i got the last remaining superpower faction(other than mine) in my campaign down to 3000 men overall and the vassals are all running around with like 20-40 troops and i try and siege a border-town and mind you the west empire(the superpower) has a very large border and half of the map and i try and siege it and my god there must have been about 20 lords swarming my army all with 20-40 troops it was insane, imo the ai prioritizes the player and his fiefs and when the player sieges a settlement doesn't matter whether its a city or a castle and even if they are getting sieged somewhere else at the same time they always seem to swarm the settlement im attacking and be mass raiding my village deep within my factions territory( ive had it where there was a queue of sorts at my village of all these lords tryna raid it) or swarming me if im laying siege, yet i never see this happen with the ai when another ai armyis attacking a settlement yeah sure they get a couple heading over to defend but not the entire faction

 

[Tal-roth]

hell even when an ai faction still have like 6-10 cities this still happens its insane i got the last remaining superpower faction(other than mine) in my campaign down to 3000 men overall and the vassals are all running around with like 20-40 troops and i try and siege a border-town and mind you the west empire(the superpower) has a very large border and half of the map and i try and siege it and my god there must have been about 20 lords swarming my army all with 20-40 troops it was insane, imo the ai prioritizes the player and his fiefs and when the player sieges a settlement doesn't matter whether its a city or a castle and even if they are getting sieged somewhere else at the same time they always seem to swarm the settlement im attacking and be mass raiding my village deep within my factions territory( ive had it where there was a queue of sorts at my village of all these lords tryna raid it) or swarming me if im laying siege, yet i never see this happen with the ai when another ai armyis attacking a settlement yeah sure they get a couple heading over to defend but not the entire faction

For sure.
This happened to me last night while I was laying siege to a city. The AI kept swarming around until they had accumulated what they thought was enough force to deal with me and then interrupted the siege. I had to fight them off FOUR times during the siege (resumed it each time) before I finally got to actually attack the city. I have an army of 159 tier 5 and 6 cavalry which is enough to decimate their larger armies made up of low level infantry recruits but it was VERY annoying. They reformed their armies way tooo fast and devoted way to much of their resources on my one siege. I mean 4 separate times during one siege!! Mind you I did build a battering ram and two siege towers so it took some time. But that was ridiculous.

It did get me a lot of influence and renown for the repeated battles and successful siege, so it wasn't all bad.

 

[The Great Grub]

For sure.
This happened to me last night while I was laying siege to a city. The AI kept swarming around until they had accumulated what they thought was enough force to deal with me and then interrupted the siege. I had to fight them off FOUR times during the siege (resumed it each time) before I finally got to actually attack the city. I have an army of 159 tier 5 and 6 cavalry which is enough to decimate their larger armies made up of low level infantry recruits but it was VERY annoying. They reformed their armies way tooo fast and devoted way to much of their resources on my one siege. I mean 4 separate times during one siege!! Mind you I did build a battering ram and two siege towers so it took some time. But that was ridiculous.

It did get me a lot of influence and renown for the repeated battles and successful siege, so it wasn't all bad.

The ai behave very strangely

 

[Warlord-616x]

so just had one battle wher i just picked up 15 prisoners (lords), and over half of them were not captured lol

 

[jli084]

Posted this elsewhere but fits here too:

Im playing as a vassal of Vlandia. We've been in a long war with the northern empire and it's been going well. The northern empire is down to their last city, and it is far from our lands. I figured that Derthert had it handled, so I just stayed at home smithing and chasing large bands of looters. Problem is that the war just keeps going. The enemy has no proper army, but since we're at war Derthert doesnt declear on anyone else. I started to feel bored with the lack of a proper challenge, so I decided to head over to the northern empire to see what they were up to. Turns out, not much:

Im pretty sure most of the flags above the city also represents lords. They seem to be cycling in and out of the city. Maybe lords should abandon a faction at a certain point. They could either move to another faction or turn peasant (seeing as they've got no lands or income).

...

They came back out:

30 prisoners, all lords, and they are not close to done:

I had to get out of there do to half my army being dead or injured...

 

[Warlord-616x]

well ive taken all their lands, and i just took their last castle, i have dozens of lords in captivity but not sure what to do with them. most of them hate me anyways already. should i kill them or let them go?

 

[jli084]

well ive taken all their lands, and i just took their last castle, i have dozens of lords in captivity but not sure what to do with them. most of them hate me anyways already. should i kill them or let them go?

Killing them will get you bad rep with all the other nobles, so would advise against it. Just throw away the key and hope they dont escape.

 

[Tal-roth]

You can't kill them without ruining your rep with all other lords as mentioned above and if you put them in prison they all escape pretty quickly. I really wish there was some reasonable alternative to put them "on ice" for a good length of time. It gets very frustrating having to deal with the same lords repeatedly in a relatively short period of time.

 

[CoolYo]

Would be cool if clans that go without land for to long would end up joining a minor faction or something. Also, if a major faction loses all castles and towns become a minor faction.

 

[captinjoehenry]

I've honestly fallen to just using the console command campaign.destroy_kingdom to kill empires once I've taken all their land. Their clans still wander about but they stop doing anything until the faction randomly resurrects a while down the line

 

[Warlord-616x]

ya i really hope they either address this or that mods can change it. just seems really abrasive.

 

[Bramborough]

Maybe lords should abandon a faction at a certain point. They could either move to another faction or turn peasant (seeing as they've got no lands or income).

Perfect example of how "fixing" one problem can lead to another completely separate problem.

Upon release a couple weeks ago, the first obvious big issue was the infamous snowball/steamroll. A big contributor to this was frequent lord defections, jumping from weaker factions to stronger ones, accelerating the snowball effect. So one of the first "anti-snowball" hotfixes was greatly lessening the chances of lord defections. Which DID work...I don't know if they've completely gotten faction-v-faction warfare quite where they want or where it should be, but the rapid snowballing has certainly diminished. But now that's led to THIS situation, lol.

 

[captinjoehenry]

Perfect example of how "fixing" one problem can lead to another completely separate problem.

Upon release a couple weeks ago, the first obvious big issue was the infamous snowball/steamroll. A big contributor to this was frequent lord defections, jumping from weaker factions to stronger ones, accelerating the snowball effect. So one of the first "anti-snowball" hotfixes was greatly lessening the chances of lord defections. Which DID work...I don't know if they've completely gotten faction-v-faction warfare quite where they want or where it should be, but the rapid snowballing has certainly diminished. But now that's led to THIS situation, lol.

I mean there's a difference between that and having them do that once the whole kingdom is basically dead. Maybe just trigger it once the faction has like 1 or 2 pieces of land left?

 

[jimmyjzh]

Perfect example of how "fixing" one problem can lead to another completely separate problem.

Upon release a couple weeks ago, the first obvious big issue was the infamous snowball/steamroll. A big contributor to this was frequent lord defections, jumping from weaker factions to stronger ones, accelerating the snowball effect. So one of the first "anti-snowball" hotfixes was greatly lessening the chances of lord defections. Which DID work...I don't know if they've completely gotten faction-v-faction warfare quite where they want or where it should be, but the rapid snowballing has certainly diminished. But now that's led to THIS situation, lol.

THIS. The problem seems to be the empires can hire mercenary company clans, who each have 3-4 lords, and pop up out of nowhere after they are defeated. They have unique units, and these don't seem to affect garrisons when they respawn, which ends up in a horde of 10-12 lords constantly harassing you.

You can't kill them without ruining your rep with all other lords as mentioned above and if you put them in prison they all escape pretty quickly. I really wish there was some reasonable alternative to put them "on ice" for a good length of time. It gets very frustrating having to deal with the same lords repeatedly in a relatively short period of time.

There is a mod called prevent escape that lets you tune down the value. I personally keep 6 lords away in my fief and it somewhat helped with the issue. Before they were simultaneously raiding 3 villages, i got so pissed i started teleporting to kill them, took 2 irl hours to fight, but they still kept coming back, and it's mostly mercenaries.